For some time now, I’ve been seeing more and more articles questioning whether newer social media channels were in the process of replacing, rather than supplementing, more “traditional” means of communication. I know many of my neighbors, and a few of the lawyers I know, have replaced their traditional “land line” with cell phones.

When I moved my office to the ‘burbs a few years ago, after practicing downtown for nearly thirty years, I had to hire a third party phone company to “move” the phone number I’d been advertising on business cards and stationary. Otherwise, I was faced with losing my long-standing number, which most lawyers considered something of a death sentence in those days. The result was, until about a week ago, that I paid one phone bill just for the old number, and then paid another phone bill for my trunk service, internet, roll-over numbers, etc.

I am in the process of painfully shedding the now “fake” number. What I’ve found, in just a few, short years since I moved my office out of downtown, was that when anyone from my office called out, the recipient picked up the non-advertised, local exchange number. They often plugged that into their cell phone or office phone’s electronic “address book” and simply pushed one button when they wanted to call us. The number they dialed, ended up being the unadvertised, local exchange number. This made the “prettier,” advertised number something of an anachronistic situation, with fewer and fewer clients, lawyers, judges, and others using it.

Eventually, keeping the old number just made less and less sense, because advances in technology and the way people were using technology dictated a new paradigm. After all, we’re rapidly moving in the direction of virtual law firms and consultants. Because of cell phone technology and office automation advances, I’m using making less use of a “static” office and spending much more time, in my law practice, in my consulting business, and as a pro bonoSCORE counselor, visiting clients in their offices. Since I typically pick up much more information about my clients’ need when I visit their office than when they visit mine, this is a “good thing” for my clients and me. The paradigm is moving for me, and I’m thinking I’m not alone in this.

“Way back” in August of 2009, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins’ article, posted on the siliconANGLE blog, asked the question, Could WordPress Be the Natural Successor to Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook?As we move from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 the borders between competing software applications and even between software and hardware are likely to blur. For now, however, the question remains, whether newer social media channels are in the process of replacing, rather than supplementing, more “traditional” means of communication. Recently, some friends on facebook responded to a comment I had made there, indicating this question might be increasingly likely to be answered in the affirmative. The very fact that I had posted something on facebook, being a relatively new user, and that there was a growing debate on this relatively new social networking channel, gives a premonition of where my thoughts on this lie.

Some pretty wise people have opined that you don’t really know a person until you see them in a stressful situation. It is then that you often have a better view into what makes them tick. The same is often true in business. What a company is made of is often not really seen until a crisis develops and they either come out on top or start a downward spiral. The same may be true of communication channels.

The social-media service — where users send short “tweets” to followers who have signed up to receive the messages — came in handy for Innovative Beverage Group Holdings Inc., whose drankbeverage.com site crashed last month after a surge in traffic following a segment on Fox News for the company’s so-called relaxation beverage, which contains “calming” ingredients like valerian root and melatonin. News Corp. owns Fox News as well as The Wall Street Journal.

Innovative Beverage notified consumers on its Twitter feed that it was working to resolve the problem. The company also did a search on Twitter for mentions of the site crash, so it could respond with tweets describing its repair efforts.

Twitter gave us an up-to-the-minute ability to take what would normally be a crisis situation and make it just another event,” says Mr. Bianchi. “You can’t do that with a 1-800-number.”

As of Monday, drankbeverage.com had more than 1,000 Twitter followers.

The horrible tragedy of the Ft. Hood shooting yesterday confirmed, for me at least, that there is a growing movement to use Twitter and other social media, rather than more traditional media, to convey news in a crisis. I heard that cell phone service essentially “crashed” during this Ft. Hood crisis, as soldiers from abroad tried to call family and comrades in the Ft. Hood area to learn what had happened. The Honolulu Advertiser‘s article, Shooting leaves 12 dead, 31 wounded reported:

The school and base were in lockdown. Normal phone lines were working but cell phones were overloaded.

“Now I can’t even get a hold of her. The cell phones are jammed. I can’t even send a text,” Biggers said. “They still have us on lockdown. I’m just staying right beside my computer with the news on and praying.”

The blogosphere is already responding in earnest to the horrific shooting spree at a Texas military base that resulted in 12 deaths and 31 wounded…

Twitter has become a central focus for communication, link sharing, information dissemination, and on the ground reporting during breaking news stories, so tech bloggers are looking at how Twitter is being used tonight. MG Siegler at TechCrunchspeculates about how Twitter is influencing its Trending Topics feature to bring breaking news stories to the forefront immediately. “And that it may even in some way rank tweets to show more relevant ones for the topic at hand,” Siegler writes.

Twitter itself, seems to periodically question just how effective it is. An article on the Twitter Web site by Jenna Dawn, Get to the Point: Twitter Trends, even acknowledges:

As Twitter grows and the number of tweets each day continues to astound us, we’ve noticed an increasing amount of clutter in the public timeline, especially with trending topics. Trends began as a useful way to find out what’s going on but has grown less interesting due to the noisiness of the conversation.

As one cable network might say, “we report, you decide…” When the military is telling folks to try texting to get information, the Red Cross is setting up a Web site to help people check on base personnel who might have been involved in the crisis, and Twitter replaces a broken down cell phone system, I have to wonder if my original thoughts on the paradigm shift might not have been right.

That’s what I think. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think.

If you are really interested, I just started yet another free group on LinkedIn, Social Media Search and Forensics. Many of these articles and discussion about them are posted there. Please join us.